News Purges Cutting Into Muscle

Last week, when ABC NewsPresident David Westin brokethe news to employees via emailthat he’d be purging as much as25% of his division, the subject lineread: “ABC News Transformation.”

The question has now become whatABC News will transform itself into,amid a fractured, warp-speed medialandscape where broadcast networksare hamstrung by limited airtime anddeclining ad revenue potential.And with ABC joining NBC and CBSin slashes to its news division—withABC’s latest purge considerably largerthan the other networks’—the answercould mean the hastening of a movefrom broadcast news divisions withmillionaire-anchor overhead to digitalnews with a much smaller budget.“Can we imagine a day,” says independentnews analyst Andrew Tyndall,“when ABC News can exist as astandalone video-journalism institution,whatever the status of ABC TV?”

Unlike NBC, which intermingles resourcesand amortizes costs acrosscable news networks MSNBC andCNBC, ABC and CBS “operate entirelyin the old system of advertisingrevenue,” says Tom Rosenstiel, directorof Pew’s Project for Excellencein Journalism. “They can’t amortizethe cost of their producers and theircorrespondents across multiple platforms.It’s a rock and a hard place forABC and CBS.”

Westin vows that the sweepingchanges in the division would notbe detrimental to the final product.“If I thought that what we were doingwould compromise the value of ourcontent in any way editorially or creatively,I wouldn’t do it,” he says.

However, the migration in broadcastnews from a story-driven approach tothe talking-head model popularizedby cable news has been evident forsome time. Deep-dive investigationsand foreign news also have beencurtailed. ABC News will rely moreheavily on one-man-band journalistswho can produce, shoot and edit theirown material.

For the coming ABC cuts, specificareas have been targeted for downsizing.Among them, Good MorningAmerica, the news division’s profitcenter, will cut back its number offeature packages (and the staff thatproduces them) in favor of morein-studio interviews and segments,according to sources at the morningshow.

At the newsmagazines, which stillmanage a modest profit, the companyhopes to replace some full-timecontract employees with freelancers. “The technology has allowed somestreamlining,” Rosenstiel observes.“You don’t need as many peopleto do certain things. But this isabout having less money and fewerpeople to do what you used to beable to do.”